"BAK" 2003 Obituary

BAKEAS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-01 published
Ex-pilot aided foreigners who hid soldiers
By Kelly HAGGARTSaturday,March 1, 2003 - Page F11
Robert ADAM/ADAMS, past president of a society set up to honour and
assist individuals who risked their lives helping Allied airmen
evade capture during the Second World War, died in Toronto this
month of cancer. He was 82.
Mr. ADAM/ADAMS was a 22-year-old Canadian pilot on loan to Britain's
Royal Air Force when his plane was shot down after bombing a
German ship in southern Greece. Stout-hearted people on two small
islands in the Aegean, risking torture or execution for their
actions, sheltered the six-man crew for a month until they were
rescued.
After the war, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS founded a chain of tool-rental stores
in the Toronto area called
ADAM/ADAMS Rent-All, which he sold when
he retired in 1989.
In 1965, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS joined the newly formed Canadian branch of
the Royal Air Forces Escaping Society. The group vowed to assist
the citizens who had helped Allied airmen who fell into their
midst escape or evade capture; thanks to their courage, almost
3,000 men had made it back to safety.
"The object of the society is to remember, " the group's literature
says, "and to aid our helpers who may still be suffering the
results of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the enemy,
and to maintain the very strong Friendships that developed during
those years."
(Ernest BEVIN,
Britain's foreign secretary in 1945-51, told the
first chairman of the group's British chapter: "Your society
does a damned sight more good in Europe than all my ambassadors
rolled together.")
John DIX, a fellow member of the Escaping Society's Canadian
branch, said that, "in most cases, we only knew our helpers a
week or less -- we were just passing through. But the nature
of the relationship and the tension of the times were such that
they became lifelong Friends. We never forgot them, we had them
over to Canada every year, we kept in touch. We owed them a debt
of honour."
Flight Lieutenant
ADAM/ADAMS and his crew of four Britons and an Australian
left their base in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of November
6, 1943, scouting for targets to bomb. They spotted a German
ship anchored off Naxos, an island in the Cyclades group south
of Athens.
After dropping 16 bombs, one of the plane's two engines was hit
by German flak. "Luckily, it kept going for 10 minutes, which
gave us time to make a getaway, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS told his daughter,
Patricia ADAM/ADAMS. "
Then it conked out and we had to slowly descend."
He ditched his disabled Wellington bomber flawlessly into the
sea. The crew escaped through hatches, and a dinghy and a parachute
popped out of the aircraft before it sank within 30 seconds of
hitting the water. The men paddled ashore to the island of Sifnos,
half a kilometre away.
"After complaining about our cigarettes being wet, we slept in
the parachute under an olive tree, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS recalled. "In
the morning, we were discovered by a girl riding by on a donkey.
She went to fetch her father [George
KARAVOS], and he went and
got someone who could understand English and who decided we weren't
German."
The initial suspicion was mutual. When Mr.
KARAVOS took the men
to his home and offered them water, they were afraid to drink
it, until the farmer reassured them by taking a first sip.
The six men were hidden first in a mountaintop monastery on Sifnos,
and then in a cave used as a goat pen on the neighbouring island
of Serifos. Their presence was kept from local children, in case
they unwittingly tipped off the German patrol that visited the
islands several times a week from the nearby occupied island
of Milos.
"During the war, 180 people on Sifnos died because they didn't
have enough to eat, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS said. "But the locals made a
big fuss over us, bringing food and cigarettes."
The men spent 10 days in the monastery, with a stream of hungry
people climbing the steep path to bring them bread and cheese,
oranges, figs, retsina and handfuls of precious, rationed cigarettes.
Then the Sifnos chief of police, Demetrius
BAKEAS, who was determined
the men should not be captured, arranged for them to go to Serifos,
because "there are people there who can help you."
A fisherman took them under cover of darkness to Serifos. There,
housed in the goat pen, they found five British commandos spying
on German troop movements. Conditions were primitive in that
cave for the next 20 days, but the spies had a wireless and were
able to arrange the air crew's rescue. A Royal Navy gunboat disguised
as a Greek fishing vessel picked them up and, moving by night,
took them to safety in Cyprus.
All six men survived the war, and later learned they had succeeded
in sinking that ship in Naxos harbour.
Mr. ADAM/ADAMS kept in touch with his helpers after the war, with
his letters translated for him by a Greek neighbour in Toronto.
"I remember being taken to Greek community functions, " Patricia
ADAM/ADAMS recalled. "And every Christmas Dad would send a parcel
to the school on Sifnos, with paper and pencils, and little dime-store
gifts for the children. Putting that package together every year
was very emotional."
"Bob was a very great guy, with a great sense of humour, " said
Roy BROWN, secretary of the Escaping Society. Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS was treasurer
of the society at his death, and served as president in 1995-96.
"We have about 100 members now across the country, who are in
their 80s and beyond, Mr.
BROWN said. "Most of our helpers
are in the same or worse shape, so we're not bringing them over
as we did up until five or six years ago. But we still help out
when we see a helper in need."
Robert Watson
ADAM/ADAMS was born on January 22, 1921, in Windsor,
Ontario, where his father, Dr. Frederick
ADAM/ADAMS, was the medical
officer of health for more than 20 years. If he had returned
to base that night after the raid on Naxos harbour, he would
have received the cable informing him of his father's death back
home.
After graduating from Windsor's Kennedy Collegiate in 1939, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS worked in a bank before enlisting in June, 1941. A few
weeks later his older brother, Coulson, was killed during training
in England, shot down by a German night fighter that had sneaked
across the Channel. His other brother, John, was also a bomber
pilot killed in action, shot down during a raid on Hanover, Germany,
just a few months before the war in Europe ended.
Robert ADAM/ADAMS's story was featured in a Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation-Television documentary
in 1966, when a Telescope camera crew followed him and his wife,
Joan, back to Sifnos, where they received a hero's welcome.
"Those Greeks had nothing to gain and everything to lose, " Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS told the show's associate producer, George Ronald. "They
were starving, and yet they gave us everything. They were superb....
I don't think they know just how kind and generous and how brave
they were."
Mr. BAKEAS, who had moved to Athens after retiring from the police
force, returned to Sifnos for the emotional reunion held 23 years
after he helped save Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS's life. Earlier, he had written
to "my dear friend" in Canada: "It is not possible for me to
forget the danger which connected us in those terrible war days.
We shall be always waiting you."
In addition to his wife, Mr.
ADAM/ADAMS leaves his children John,
Patricia and Mary, sons-in-law Lawrence
SOLOMON and Steve
DOUGLAS/DOUGLASS,
and granddaughters Essie and Catharine.
Robert Watson
ADAM/ADAMS, chain-store founder and past president of
the Canadian branch of the Royal Air Force Escaping Society
born in Windsor, Ontario, on January 22, 1921; died in Toronto
on February 10, 2003.

BAKER o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-04-09 published
Robert (Bob)
BAKER
Died in St. Catharines, March 13, 2003 at the age of 81 years
Bob was predeceased by his wife Marie
{JEWELL}
Loving father of Garry, Len, Ken, Barb, Fred, Doris and Michael and 21
grandchildren. Bob made his home in Gore Bay for many years.

BAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-11 published
ANGEVINE,
WinstonCharles
On Tuesday, February 4, 2003, at the age of 80, Winston
ANGEVINE
died peacefully, at home, surrounded by his loving family. He
is survived by his wife of 59 years, Miriam ''Trudy''; his daughters
Maureen,Margaret,Valerie (Kevin
PATRIQUIN,) and Daphne (Ken
BAKER;) his grandchildren Ellen, Amanda, Neal, Caroline, Meredith,
Evan, Hilary, and Jennifer; and his sisters Adeline, Shirley,
Pansie and Violet. Winston was a veteran of the Royal Canadian
Air Force; a graduate of Mount Allison University, Nova Scotia
Technical College (now Dalhousie University) and McGill University
and a professional engineer. He loved life, his family, and his
rose garden. He touched many lives, and will be greatly missed.
A private cremation has been held. If desired, donations in his
name may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society or a charity
of your choice.

BAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-12 published
'He kept a little flame of geometry alive'
Superstar University of Toronto mathematician considered himself
an artist, but his seminal work inevitably found practical applications
By Siobhan
ROBERTSSaturday,April 12, 2003 - Page F11
Widely considered the greatest classical geometer of his time
and the man who saved his discipline from near extinction, Harold
Scott MacDonald
COXETER, who died on March 31 at 96, said of
himself, with characteristic modesty, "I am like any other artist.
It just so happens that what fills my mind is shapes and numbers."
Prof. COXETER's work focused on hyperdimensional shapes, specifically
the symmetry of regular figures and polytopes. Polytopes are
geometric shapes of any number of dimensions that cannot be constructed
in the real world and can be visualized only when the eye of
the beholder possesses the necessary insight; they are most often
described mathematically and sometimes can be represented with
hypnotically intricate fine-line drawings.
"I like things that can be seen," Prof.
COXETER once remarked.
"You have to imagine a different world where these queer things
have some kind of shape."
Known as Donald (shortened from MacDonald,) Prof.
COXETER had
such a passion for his work and unrivalled elegance in constructing
and writing proofs that he motivated countless mathematicians
to pick up the antiquated discipline of geometry long after it
had been deemed passť.
John Horton
CONWAY, the Von Neumann professor of mathematics
at Princeton University, never studied under Prof.
COXETER, but
he considers himself an honorary student because of the
COXETERian
nature of his work.
"With math, what you're doing is trying to prove something and
that can get very complicated and ugly.
COXETER always manages
to do it clearly and concisely," Prof.
CONWAY said. "He kept
a little flame of geometry alive by doing such beautiful works
himself.
"I'm reminded of a quotation from Walter Pater's book The Renaissance.
He was describing art and poetry, but he talks of a small, gem-like
flame: 'To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain
this ecstasy, is success in life.' "
Prof. COXETER's oeuvre included more than 250 papers and 12 books.
His Introduction to Geometry, published in 1961, is now considered
a classic -- it is still in print and this year is back on the
curriculum at McGill University. His Regular Polytopes is considered
by some as the modern-day addendum to Euclid's Elements. In 1957,
he published Generators and Relations for Discrete Groups, written
jointly with his PhD student and lifelong friend Willy
MOSER.
It is currently in its seventh edition.
Prof. COXETER's self-image as an artist was validated by his
Friendship with and influence on Dutch artist M. C.
ESCHER, who,
when working on his Circle Limit 3 drawings, used to say, "I'm
Coxetering today."
They met at the International Mathematical Congress in Amsterdam
in 1954 and then corresponded about their mutual interest in
repeating patterns and representations of infinity. In a letter
to his son, Mr.
ESCHER noted that a diagram sent to him by Prof.
COXETER that inspired his Circle Limit 3 prints "gave me quite
a shock."
He added that "
COXETER's hocus-pocus text is no use to me at
all.... I understand nothing, absolutely nothing of it."
While Mr. ESCHER claimed total ignorance of math, Prof.
COXETER
wrote numerous papers on the Dutchman's "intuitive geometry."
Though Prof.
COXETER did geometry for its own sake, his work
inevitably found practical application. Buckminster
FULLER encountered
his work in the construction of his geodesic domes. He later
dedicated a book to Prof.
COXETER: "By virtue of his extraordinary
life's work in mathematics, Prof.
COXETER is the geometer of
our bestirring twentieth century. [He is] the spontaneously acclaimed
terrestrial curator of the historical inventory of the science
of pattern analysis."
Prof. COXETER's work with icosohedral symmetries served as a
template of sorts in the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the
Carbon 60 molecule. It has also proved relevant to other specialized
areas of science such as telecommunications, data mining, topology
and quasi-crystals.
In 1968, Prof.
COXETER added to his list of converts an anonymous
society of French mathematicians, the Bourbakis, who actively
and internationally sought to eradicate classical geometry from
the curriculum of math education.
"Death to Triangles, Down with Euclid!" was the Bourbaki war
cry. Prof.
COXETER's rebuttal: "Everyone is entitled to their
opinion. But the Bourbakis were sadly mistaken."
One member of the society, Pierre
CARTIER, met Prof.
COXETER
in Montreal and became enamoured of his work. Soon, he had persuaded
his fellow Bourbakis to include Prof.
COXETER's approach in their
annual publication. "An entire volume of Bourbaki was thoroughly
inspired by the work of
COXETER," said Prof.
CARTIER, a professor
at Denis Diderot University in Paris.
In the 1968 volume, Prof.
COXETER's name was writ large into
the lexicon of mathematics with the inauguration of the terms
"COXETER number," "
COXETER group" and
"COXETER graph."
These concepts describe symmetrical properties of shapes in multiple
dimensions and helped to bridge the old-fashioned classical geometry
with the more au courant and applied algebraic side of the discipline.
These concepts continue to pervade geometrical discourse, several
decades after being discovered by Prof.
COXETER.
Prof. COXETER became a serious mathematician at the relatively
late age of 14, though family folklore has it that, as a toddler,
he liked to stare at the columns of numbers in the financial
pages of his father's newspaper.
He was born into a Quaker family in Kensington, just west of
London, on February 9, 1907. His mother, Lucy
GEE, was a landscape
artist and portrait painter, and his father, Harold, was a manufacturer
of surgical instruments, though his great love was sculpting.
They had originally named their son MacDonald Scott
COXETER,
but a godparent suggested that the boy's father's name should
be added at the front. Another relative then pointed out that
H.M.S. COXETER made him sound like a ship of the royal fleet
so the names were switched around.
When Prof.
COXETER was 12, he created his own language -- "Amellaibian"
a cross between Latin and French, and filled a 126-page notebook
with information on the imaginary world where it was spoken.
But more than anything he fancied himself a composer, writing
several piano concertos, a string quartet and a fugue. His mother
took her son and his musical compositions to Gustav
HOLST.
His
advice: "Educate him first."
He was then sent to boarding school, where he met John Flinders
PETRIE, son of Egyptologist Sir Flinders
PETRIE.
The two were
passing time at the infirmary contemplating why there were only
five Platonic solids -- the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron
and icosahedron. They then began visualizing what these shapes
might look like in the fourth dimension. At the age of 15, Prof.
COXETER won a school prize for an English essay on how to project
these geometric shapes into higher dimensions -- he called it
"Dimensional Analogy."
Prof. COXETER's father took his son along with his essay to meet
friend and fellow pacifist Bertrand
RUSSELL.
Mr.RUSSELL recommended
Prof. COXETER to mathematician E.H.
NEVILLE, a scout, of sorts,
for mathematics prodigies. He was impressed by Prof.
COXETER's
work but appalled by some inexcusable gaps in his mathematical
knowledge. Prof.
NEVILLE arranged for private tutelage in pursuit
of a scholarship at Cambridge. During this period, Prof.
COXETER
was forbidden from thinking in the fourth dimension, except on
Sundays.
He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1926 and was among
five students handpicked by Ludwig
WITTGENSTEIN for his philosophy
of mathematics class. During his first year at Cambridge, at
the age of 19, he discovered a new regular polyhedron that had
six hexagonal faces at each vertex.
After graduating with first-class honours in 1929, he received
his doctorate under H. F.
BAKER in 1931, winning the coveted
Smith's Prize for his thesis.
Prof. COXETER did fellowship stints back and forth between Princeton
and Cambridge for the next few years, focusing on the mathematics
of kaleidoscopes -- he had mirrors specially cut and hinged together
and carried them in velvet pouches sewn by his mother. By 1933,
he had enumerated the n-dimensional kaleidoscopes -- that is,
kaleidoscopes operating up to any number of dimensions.
The concepts that became known as
COXETER groups are the complex
algebraic equations he developed to express how many images may
be seen of any object in a kaleidoscope (he once used a paper
triangle with the word "nonsense" printed on it to track reflections).
In 1936, Prof.
COXETER was offered an assistant professorship
at the University of Toronto. He made the move shortly after
the sudden death of his father and following his marriage to
Rien BROUWER.
She was from the Netherlnds and he met her while
she was on holiday in London.
As a professor, Prof.
COXETER was known to flout set curriculum.
Ed BARBEAU, now a professor at the U of T, recalled that at the
start of his classes, Prof.
COXETER would spread out a manuscript
on the desks at the front of the room. During his lecture, he
would often pause for minutes at a time to make notes when a
student offered something that might be relevant to his work
in progress. When the work was later published, students were
pleasantly surprised to find that their suggestions had been
duly credited.
Prof. COXETER was also known to show up to class carrying a pineapple,
or a giant sunflower from his garden, demonstrating the existence
of geometric principles in nature. And he was notorious for leaping
over details, expecting students to fill in the rest.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's resident intellectual, Lister
SINCLAIR, was one of
Prof. COXETER's earliest students. He once recounted that Prof.
COXETER would "write an expression on the board and you could
see it talking to him. It was like Michelangelo walking around
a block of marble and seeing what's in there."
Asia Ivic WEISS, a professor at York University, Prof.
COXETER's
last PhD student and the only woman so honoured, describes an
incident that perfectly exemplifies Prof.
COXETER's math myopia.
Going into labour with her first child, she called him to cancel
their weekly meeting. Prof.
COXETER, who never acknowledged her
pregnancy, said not to worry, he would send over a stack of research
to keep her busy when she got home from the hospital.
Despite several offers from other universities, Prof.
COXETER
stayed at University of Toronto throughout his career.
Like his father, he was a pacifist. In 1997, he was among those
who marched a petition to the university president's office to
protest against an honorary degree being conferred on George
BUSH Sr. Prof.
COXETER recalled with disdain Robert
PRITCHARD's
telling him, "Donald, I have more important things to worry about."
After his official retirement in 1977, Prof.
COXETER continued
as a professor emeritus, making weekly visits to his office.
These subsided only in the past several months. On the weekend
before his death, he finished revisions on his final paper, which
he had delivered the previous summer in Budapest.
In his last five years, he survived a heart attack, a broken
hip (he sprung himself from the hospital early to drive to a
geometry conference in Wisconsin) and, most recently, prostate
cancer.
Considering his 96 years of vegetarianism and a strict exercise
regime, he felt betrayed by his body. "I feel like the man of
Thermopylae who doesn't do anything properly," he commented
recently after an awkward evening out, quoting nonsense poet
Edward LEAR.
Prof. COXETER died in his home, with three long last breaths,
just before bed on the last day of March.
His brain is now undergoing study at McMaster University, along
with that of Albert
EINSTEIN.
NeuroscientistSandraWITELSON
is tryng to determine whether his brain's extraordinary capacities
are associated with its structure.
Prof. COXETER met with her at the beginning of March and learned
that the atypical elements of Einstein's brain, compared with
an average brain, were symmetrical on both right and left sides.
Prof. WITELSON said she wondered whether there might be similar
findings with Prof.
COXETER's brain. "Isn't that nice," he said.
"I suppose that would indicate all my interest in symmetry was
well founded."
Prof. COXETER leaves his daughter Susan and son Edgar. His wife
died in 1999.
Siobhan ROBERTS is a Toronto writer whose biography of Donald
COXETER will be published by Penguin in 2005.

BAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-02 published
BAKER,
Don
Born Middleton, England, November 29, 1931. Died St. Lucia, West
Indies, December 23, 2002. Don arrived in Montreal in 1958 and
moved to Toronto in the early sixties. An avid sailor, he was
a longtime member of the National Yacht Club in Toronto. Don
worked for many years in the advertising and travel industries
before settling in St. Lucia in 1992. Behind a sometimes crusty
exterior was a very kind, gentle and nice guy who will be remembered
and missed by many.

BAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-24 published
In Memoriam, Graham
BAKER
The lawyers and staff of Robins Appleby and Taub LLP mourn the
passing of our good friend and valued client, Graham
BAKER, on
July 13, 2003.
We extend our deepest sympathy to his wife Pat, his daughter
Jacqueline, his stepchildren Jennifer and Sean and all his family
and confreres.
Graham, as president of The Barclay - Grayson Development Corporation,
was a highly respected developer, raconteur and friend. He will
be missed by all who knew him.
Page B2

BAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-08 published
'There are too many ruined boys'
By Erin ANDERSSEN,
Saturday,November 8, 2003 - Page F6
ParrySound,Ontario -- Clara
WHITE/WHYTE began her voyage into war
by losing her purse on the way to the train. It was September
15, 1915. Her diary names it "a bright sunshiny day" and notes
the crowd's "rousing send off." The soldiers and nurses, Ms.
WHITE/WHYTE among them, left Toronto for a Montreal military ship and
a voyage, beyond Wales and icebergs, to a continent of falling
bombs and death.
She landed in London first, with time on her hands, as she wrote
in her red, leather-bound diary, to shop, sip tea and tour the
galleries.
Clara WHITE/WHYTE was not one to sit idly by. At times, her account
of the First World War -- enlivened by daily weather reports,
notes on the cost of things (60 cents then for a pie) and the
"peculiar" fashion of the day -- reads more like a Grand Tour
than a Great War. She wanders the Zoological Gardens in London,
dines at the Grand Hotel du Louvre in Boulogne and climbs the
1,224 steps of the cathedral in Rouen, making it to the top even
when "the other girls gave up the ascent."
Nursing the sick and wounded in camps at Rouen and Solonika,
Ms. WHITE/WHYTE surely would have seen the cost of war, but her diary
focuses instead on the bits of life she could find in the midst
of it.
"There are," she writes in one letter home, "too many ruined
boys around now." But she barely details in her diary what has
ruined them. She tells in spare sentences of working in the German
measles tent or waiting for the typhoid patients to arrive; she
makes antiseptic note of bombs overhead. Two stitches in her
own cheek merit a single line and no explanation.
Maybe you didn't talk of such things then, her great-niece, Phyllis
GERHART, speculated. And perhaps this is what Ms.
WHITE/WHYTE wanted
to remember: the cherry-strawberry supper in her tent on Dominion
Day, "the boys" caroling on Christmas Eve, tea with the other
nurses to plan for a "grand masquerade to celebrate the closing
of 1915" -- even as bombs fell nearby, injuring some men and
killing a shepherd and six sheep.
Her descendants don't know much about her, beyond the small diary.
It sat for decades in a dresser drawer in the bedroom of her
niece, Laura
BAKER, and was eventually passed to her daughter,
Ms. GERHART, who lives now in Parry Sound.
Ms. WHITE/WHYTE's mother is believed to have died when she was young,
and her father to have been connected to the silk trade. The
family lived in Toronto, near the Danforth, and Clara and her
sister, Alice, were raised in a proper, middle-class Victorian
household.
The sisters were close, but took separate paths: Alice helped
at home and eventually married and had a family, while Clara
escaped to school and nursing.
On April 7, 1915, she volunteered to go to war. According to
military records at the National Archives, she was 41. She was
paid $50 a month.
In a faded picture from that time, Ms.
WHITE/WHYTE stares back with
a half-smile, standing near woods in her nurse's uniform, the
belt cinched tight around her thin waist, dark bangs poking out
beneath her veil.
The impression left by her diary is of an energetic woman, keen
for an adventure. At the masquerade party on New Year's Eve,
1915, she reports that she took first prize, dressed as John
Bull (the British version of Uncle Sam). She makes note of having
a hearty laugh at the sight of a Frenchman hoisting his wife
up on a cart by her backside.
Many of her days were spent walking into the village to do laundry,
and writing letters; at home, they received postcards, rose bulbs
and a box of soldier's buttons. She took pictures too, touristy
shots collected into an old album her relatives still own, of
the ship that took her across the ocean, of the camp in France
and of the scenery.
In one picture, she is sitting on stone steps, the only woman
with a dozen soldiers. One of her wartime possessions was a bullet
with a cross carved into its tip. The story behind it has been
lost, though Ms.
GERHART likes to imagine it was a gift from
a grateful patient.
Ms. WHITE/WHYTE's last entry is dated May 8, 1916. But the military
records say she was still in Europe in 1918, when she contracted
influenza. She didn't sail home until the summer of 1919. A year
later, with the war over, she was discharged from service. She
never married.
Her fate is the subject of some confusion: Ms.
GERHART had always
understood that her great aunt died of influenza, after contracting
the illness while nursing patients. But a handwritten note on
one of the folders in the archives says she passed away in 1930.
The diary of an independent woman, spirited in the midst of hardship,
is the only trace she left behind.
Erin ANDERSSEN is a reporter in The Globe and Mail's Ottawa bureau.

BAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-24 published
GAUL,
KevinJoseph
A native son of Australia who embraced Canada as his home at
the age of 23, died in Toronto on November 20, 2003, surrounded
by his wife, Madeleine, and his children Alison and Philip. Kevin's
life was centred in his family, his Friends, his church and his
community. His support to his community was life-long. It ranged
from his service in the Reserve Army in the Royal Canadian Ordinance
Corps component of the Toronto Service Battalion and his leadership
of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority to his countless hours
of charitable work, in roles such as Director and President of
the Credit Counseling Service of Toronto, and a key facilitator
of the Employment Resources Group, an outreach project of the
Anglican Church. In addition, he consulted on housing and education
extensively throughout the Caribbean, an area that was dear to
his heart. Twenty- five years ago, when Kevin's illness was first
diagnosed, he was expected to live only a few years. However,
his love of life and commitment to the people, causes, and things
he loved gave him the strength to exceed all expectations. Until
almost the end, few understood the severity of his illness, so
strong and relentless was his pursuit of life. Dr. Michael
BAKER
was with Kevin from the initial diagnosis until the last minutes
of his life. The family gives their heartfelt thanks for the
last 25 years to Michael and his team, and to the Transfusion
team at the Princess Margaret Hospital. They also thank Dr. Marcella
MESENSKY, our family physician and friend, the Toronto East General
Hospital, 2 special paramedics and a compassionate Emergency
team at Mount Sinai. Predeceased by his parents, John and Theresa
Clair GAUL,
Kevin leaves a part of himself in the hearts and
minds of all who knew him, especially his beloved family, Madeleine,
Alison and Philip, his brothers Tony, Greg (Carol), Brian (Anne)
GAUL, his sister-in-law, Judy (Mike)
MARLOW, and his uncles,
aunts, nieces, nephews, and cousins and Friends here, in Australia,
the United Kingdom Fenelon Falls and Coboconk. Visitation will
be at Heritage Funeral Centre, 50 Overlea Blvd. (416-423-1000)
on Thursday, November 27th from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Funeral
service on Friday November 28th at 11: 00 a.m. at St. Columba
and All Hallows Anglican Church, 2723 St. Clair Ave East. In
lieu of flowers, donations may sent to the Princess Margaret
Hospital Leukemia Research Fund or to St. Columba and All Hallows
Anglican Church, Toronto.
''And now we see as through a glass darkly, but then we shall
see face to face.''